


we sing we dance we steal things

by auxanges



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Caliginous Romance | Kismesis, Canon-Typical Violence, F/M, Minor Character Death, Pirates, Quadrant Vacillation, Rough Sex, Xeno
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-08-25
Updated: 2018-08-25
Packaged: 2019-07-02 13:22:11
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,781
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15797391
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/auxanges/pseuds/auxanges
Summary: Your professions are a far cry from quiet; the sea competes for order and obedience; come day, your voices are rough with sex and rust and raucous laughter. When Spin tosses her head back to sing, and the torches and oil lamps aboard flicker just so, you think maybe you can hear gods.





	we sing we dance we steal things

**Author's Note:**

  * For [mangoeclipse](https://archiveofourown.org/users/mangoeclipse/gifts).



> I'd really love to see anything revolving around when their relationship was at its prime! 2 stupid pirates still each other's hottest irons in the fire(s)  
> *  
> my last 2 brain cells: hnnghngng dualfang................good
> 
> thank you for the opportunity and for participating!

The sea wakes before you do. There are those beneath your standing who subscribe to the belief that she never sleeps; you have been around long enough to know better. You plan your dockings and day-watches around the lulls of the waves, the current as your timepiece, the shattered skeletons of more idiotic seafarers in the reef beds as your compass points.  

Your commission and post were hatchright, but your deals with the deeps were yours alone to make.  

This far north, nights run long and tempestuous. You and your crew alike are restless—every scrape of ice against the hull is an ache running from heel to horntip. When the sea wills it, you and a couple colder trolls wander out to break up thicker pieces by hand. Tonight, though, she has you taking helm steadier, all but mains doused with naught but the auroras and the groans of ice for company.  

Suits you fine. You have a rendezvous here: you’ve come to trust company rather than seek it out. (Trust, of course, dangling from a particularly long gallows-rope of semantics.)

“Ship afore!”

Speak of the devil.  

You squint at the moons’ reflections off the glaciers. “Flag?” you call to the barrelman.

“ _Widow’s Weave_ , sir!”

“Aye, that’s one of hers.” Atypical, though. The _Weave_ is two-masted, and less ideal for the rougher seas of the north. The Marquise is oft quick to remind the world of her infinite strategies, though, so maybe—

“Two more, Cap’n! Headhunter colours off the starboard bow!”

Ah.

* * *

 

Few mariners (of the handful that try their hand at sailing so far from the warmer oceans in the first place) are reckless enough to engage in the narrow straits your caste nicknamed the Ribs. The Marquise fits that description well enough to have her portrait painted under it: when you unfurl gallants and call hands on deck, she fires a flare of acknowledgements and a volley of broadside at the bounty ships.  

Loathing warms you like stolen drink.  

You pass off the wheel to your first mate and stalk up the fo’castle, catching the pistols someone tosses you. The Crosshairs are strapped across your spine, a faint tickle of power against your undamaged fin. You scarce break stride as you load.  

She’s laughing, as she often does when you see her. She’s got teeth like pearls, does Spin, so starkly different from your own rows of serrated fangs or the fine needle points behind )(er wine-dark smile. You’ve run your tongue over her canines til you drew blood and let her taste your evolutionary trophy. Here, the playing field of the deeps is rolling like the dice in her palm.  

“Always with the entrances,” you shoot; the ice sends your voice on wings across the water. It’s a convenient little trick, in your line of work.  

“I’m not known for my subtlety, Orphaner!”

She speaks true.  

The bounty hunters have allegiances to silver, old currency that rebellion upstarts deal in. You know this because you collect it from their hulls and pockets when you dispose of them. From your position, you can see it around their wrists, ugly, dissident jewelry. When Spin kicks off a barrel and cuts down the one closest her it glints pink in the moonlight.  

“You going to stand there or are you going to at least pretend you’re of use to me?”

The bounty ship closest to the _Weave_ is already tossing lines to board: you call mortars down on the slowly circling one, bright green and deadly, before bearing down on the assailant. Pain in your arse, when intruders go after what’s yours.  

Spin’s cutlass is oily with blood. It stains her boots as she turns to snap orders over her shoulder. You pay none of them heed—you answer to a single troll and to the deeps themselves. But you’ve worked together a long time, together and opposed, and you take a running start to haul yourself aboard the _Weave_ , and none of her crew bat an eye.

“What have you gone an done?” you ask, when your own feet hit the boards and something like bone cracks beneath the left one. You swing out your opposite arm in a wide arc and fire a shot between an attacker’s eyes.  

“Nothing out of the ordinary,” she protests. It’s answer enough—last run of the feeds you counted fourteen separate rewards for the Marquise, requesting her capture anywhere from _dead_ to _incapacitated_ to _head must not be pickled compliance failure will result in culling._ “Why, are you disappointed? Worse? Envy is a vice, Ampora.”

You snarl at her, and all she does is lift her patch to wink her burnt eye at you and toss the Octet high in the air. Blood from another troll spatters your coat, and you hate her enough to choke on it.  

Her grin fades, suddenly, and you both leap out of the way as something whizzes past the space where you stood previous. The deck rail has a neat, charred hole bitten through it; jaws of a beast that, try as you might, you cannot best.  

“The mizzen’s caught, Cap’n!” one of her crew reports.  

Even from here, you can feel the kiss of fire over your fins. A very, very old part of you snaps to attention, and your legs ache with the effort of resisting tossing your sorry carcass overboard.  

“Fuck,” Spin mutters. “I didn’t catch any mortars off their ships—old man, if you’re throwing me to the sharks _now_ , I swear—”

“Don’t flatter yourself.” You roll into a crouch and pick off two more trolls. Messy shots: your balance is smoke-skewed.  

She pulls herself up by a piece of frayed rigging (you didn’t waste time offering a hand that would only be refused), frowning into the spray. “Pyromancer? Psionic?”

“This far freezin? The Ribs are a death trap for em.” You wonder, though—trolls with seldom left to lose tend to go out with more than a whimper.  

Another whistle of power, not unlike that of the gun still across your shoulders. Spin yells, and a shattered piece of the foremast crashes to the deck.  

And she’s mad, is she hell. Draws to her full height and lets out a fuckin banshee-scream like you hear on your free-dives, and severs the remaining headhunters’ minds like the kindling to the bonfire of the _Weave_. They topple, some into the drink.  

The ship moans at the hinges. You’re standing on a fuse box; the thin crew the Marquise keeps on her smaller vessels are either already dead or scrambling not to be. Your own ship is veering to clear the inevitable blast. You? You ain’t done here, is what you are.

“Take a breath,” you shout over the ship’s death knell, and ram into your rival, arms wrapping around her middle as you pitch overboard into the sea.

* * *

 

She’s rigid in your grip as you sink. The water here is cold enough to put your system on alert, but lesser trolls have frozen in the Ribs before they got a chance to drown. You jackknife through the clear current, twisting only after a minute to glance back at the burning ship. The _Weave_ is a shimmering hulk of yellow-orange flame, faint green pillars of mortar fire from the bounty ships behind her.  

Your pusher thumps behind your ruined eye.  

When you surface to let her have air and to get your bearings, she’s swearing up a storm so fast you’re surprised she doesn’t chew herself open on blasphemy.  

“—of a bitch! I had it perfectly under control. You saw my position, tell me it wasn’t under control—”

“Over my mangled corpse,” you reply, because when Spin monologues, she don’t give much a shit what actually comes out your trap.  

“Precisely,” she continues, proving you right. “A pyromancer—how the fuck could I have overlooked that? H-how c-c-c—”

She cuts herself off, abruptly, with a frustrated sigh, frost-tipped and catching in her teeth. It is a horrible little piece of vulnerability; you’re fair certain she hates it more than you do.

You loosen your hold on her. “Keep movin,” you advise, unslinging your rifle. Her feet kick you once or twice or six times as she treads water: she’s a good swimmer, the Marquise, better than some of the third-rate waders in your ranks. But blood betrays blood out here, and you’d prefer not to give the deeps any more frozen bodies tonight. Not this body, anyway.

Hah. You crass bastard.

Raising the Crosshairs to your shoulder, you fire a signal in the direction of your ship’s colours, poking between floes. The shot explodes with a hellish screech of power, peppering the sky with ephemeral stars.

Mindfang watches, the apples of her cheeks and the skin around her lips a supersaturated blue.

They bring her round quick enough to pick you up. You follow her up the ladder and wave off the hexcodes and statistics of the bounty hunters. The water’s chilled your gills like you’ve run fuckin mouthwash through them, fuck.

“Shall we drop em off at next port, sir?”

You glance sidelong at the shivering remains of her crew. The teals and lower blues ain’t like to make it out of the Ribs alive. “Nah. They sail with us back to regroup at the Cape.”

“What?” says your quartermaster.

“What?” sputters the Marquise, in the middle of wringing saltwater from her hair.

“Seems clear to me that Spinneret Mindfang – who, per Imperial Law, is a guest under flag of parlay so long as those atrocious boots scrape up my deck – is in need of additional firepower til she’s reacquainted with her fleet.”

It isn’t entirely out of the ordinary a deal. Hell, it’s one you’re shamefully been on both sides of before. Still, for headhunters to drag boilerbloods up to the Ribs for a go at her—it’s uncharacteristically bold.

And like you said, you do not like others going after what’s yours.

The quartermaster spits. “ _Guest_. Guest her in brig and collect the coin, seems a much better use of time an—”

You flip the Crosshairs over your forearm and blast a hole through his chest.

“It seems a position’s just opened up,” you say, fins panning over the rest of your crew. “The Marquise’ll fill in interim. If anyone tries to claim blood over rank before we dock your colour will sink to soup for the deeps.”

“Aye, sir!”

“Loose mains. Get us out of this shithole.”

* * *

 

The _Grigori_ has not been conscripted to your fleet the longest, but it’s still one of your favourites. She cuts through the ice and current like a dream, fifty-two cannons each side and obsidian lining the hull, overlaid with your insignia. You let her previous owner bleed out slowly so he could watch you sail away with her in tow.

(A seer once told you she’ll outlive you. You put no stock in false prophecy, but you wouldn’t exactly be mad if it turned out true, neither. When the time comes for your final dive deepside, you’ve got every intention of making yourself remembered.)

Belowdecks, Spin strips off her coat and tosses it over a chair. Your quarters are spacious, with heavy curtains repoed from a merchant galleon serving as a divider between the practical and the professional.

You say, “You’re drippin all over the rug.”

“What’s the difference between me dragging water in here and you doing it?” she shoots back, rolling out her shoulders.

“Everything in here is mine, is what’s the difference.”

“Ever the charmer.”

She’s grimacing around those sweet nothins, though—her hand’s braced over the metal socket of her arm, the pads of her fingers tinged blue and dancing with sluggish cold.

Ain’t much a sight you care for. “Give it here.”

She bares her teeth at your outstretched hand, which just makes this whole business worse for both parties. “I don’t need—”

“Pity? Good, cause I ain’t givin it to you.” You add, through gritted fangs, “you know well enough what my red looks like.”

She stares you down like a pistol waiting for the tenth step to be taken. Then she uncurls, lithe as an eel and just as clever, sidestepping to hoist herself up on your table. For good measure, she whips her hair hard before tying it up, spattering the carved oak with sea-spray.

You deserve each other as much as you deserve damnation.

You shuck your own coat, hanging it to more or less dry. You’ll scrub out the salt later. Sleeves are rolled, your hair scraped away from your ugly mug, and then you’re blind-eye-to-blind-eye with Aranea Serket.

“I ought to cut off your arm,” she mutters as you tuck your fingers under her elbow, “see how you like it.”

“Careful,” you reply. “I just might.”

“You’re particularly vile.” It eases some of the tension in her, mind, washing over you like another cold swell of the tide.

All you have on hand is gun oil and a small jar of whale fat: as intrigued as you are about the former, frostbite on prosthetics is a monster all its own, and you didn’t tow Spin through the Ribs to ruin what you’ve got going on a technicality. You scoop two fingerfuls of the stuff and work it into the scarred skin at the metal’s base. She doesn’t make a sound—your hands ain’t warm, but the blubber’s fine enough. You’re tempted to coat your number gills some, but like hell you’re exposing those right now. Outside, ice bumps timidly against the _Grigori_ , the sea’s sleepy heartbeat.

Mindfang asks, “How much would they need to offer, for you to turn me in?”

“Ain’t a question of money,” you say, because you never mastered her art of lying. “I’ll turn you in when I have reason to.”

It’s a conversation you’ve had before. If you were a few centuries younger, it’d make you nervous; now, the world has taken bites out of you. You know your places in the food chain.

You turn her arm to swipe some more of the grease over the hinges, dragging your digits across her throat along the way. Spin’s eyes shutter—you don’t remember her discarding her patch, but the burnt scarlet of her empty one warms you the rest of the way. Your grip adjusts, and your free hand braces against the desk. It creaks with age under your weight.

Neither of you really wanted to kiss, the first time. It just sort of happened, a furious mess of teeth and blood impossible to name, stubborn as you were. Maybe you knew how horribly you’d chase it. Spin catches your bottom lip between her teeth and you let a growl coat the walls of your quarters.

Her fingers find your hair and the bases of your fins; your own teeth graze the line of her jaw in answer. Thing about Spin is she kisses lots of trolls, cause she knows it pisses you off enough to chase all their tastes from her mouth, to spread her on your desk and to take her til she forgets all the names she never bothered to learn in the first place.

Envy is, indeed, a hell of a vice.

You make quick work of her pants. This has her snarling, and she vengefully explores the gills at your throat. The metal is cold against them, even in comparison, and when they flare open in heavy response you feel the pull of arousal low in your gut.

She makes a strange half-laughing noise, rougher than her usual grating cackle. It’s how you know you’re getting to her. Untucking your shirt from your trousers, she lets herself at where you’d been refusing to let her go—her claws drag along your gill covers, and you clamp them shut with enough force to see stars, your breath forced out through your throat.

“Wuss,” she taunts.

You roll your hips in reply, and ignore the swell of—victory? Satisfaction? Relief?—that drops your head down as she moans. It’s a pretty noise, not one you’d dare to say you’ve earned by any stretch. It means you relish it.

You’re only half-unsheathed when she closes a hand around you, cause if there’s one person in all of the deadest depths who needs control more than you it’s Mindfang. She pulls you free the rest of the way with a wet noise and you snap your teeth at her throat, and then she wraps her legs around your waist and her seared ocular says, _I dare you._

Spinneret’s never easy to read except in fucking. Then, you can map her like a nor’easter, with your nails mockingly slow along her thighs til her own bulge is trying to guide yours in. Her metal elbow screeches against your desk. Whatever. Inconveniences fall by the wayside when you’re buried inside her.

She’s a singer, is Mindfang, same as you and any captain worthy of surviving out here. You can hear it when she lets her head fall back, her hair a cascade and her pulse a limping metronome. “Cronus,” says she, and it’s what’ll do you in for good, this sea-demon who plucked your hatchname from your pan decades ago like a lonely prize. You ain’t about to ask for it back.

You lick a stripe at the juncture of her prosthetic, the flushed skin and burning metal at war against your tongue, and piston your hips. At this, she moans some more, and then her fingers (the real ones, not those artificial decorations) find your nook, and then you come apart like ribbon.

No cargo space is wasted on buckets. Any hookups aboard are under marine discretion: in other words, the grinding of the ice swallows the sound of your climax, and when Mindfang pulls her fingers out of you, you seize her wrist and run them over her lips. It undoes her well as anything.

* * *

 

A deckhand brings you freshwater to clean off. Not ideal – you’d prefer ducking through the hatch under the sealskin rug for a proper bone-chilling soak – but you have company. Plus, you’ve done your time with the whole ‘pail and haul tail’ routine, and it’s harder when it’s your ship you’re on.

No matter. You gather some water up in the little cup the deckhand provided, dunking it over your head. The water smells thinly metallic, like quarry rocks. You yank your hair into submission once more, reaching for a rag to wipe the dark mess between your thighs.

“Whatever happened to ladies first?” asks Mindfang, stripped to her bra and her boots kicked up on your desk. It would look ridiculous, if it were anyone else.

“You’re no lady, Spin,” you answer, straightening your fingers one by one to let the rag drop in the basin.

“Age before beauty. I get it.” She raises one foot a little higher to wave at you before kicking to standing. Her longest finger traces over one of your inkings: if you were to guess, it ain’t much older than her. “You’re really going to see this escort through.”

“You disappointed?” You dunk a second rag into the water; the few tendrils of steam make your fins flick.

“Optimistically curious, more like.” She pricks you with a nail and laughs when you snap at her.

Turning her away from you, you lift her curls from the nape of her neck to run the cloth over the delicate skin there. Two knobs of her spine down is the Imperial iron of piracy, dull blue in the thin light of your quarters. “Every sail’s an experiment to you, innit?”

She twists a little, grinning. “Who said anything about it being limited to sail?”

* * *

 

Not all your crew are halfwits. If they were, they wouldn’t be your crew, would they? When you come back above deck, you and Mindfang are both met with varying salutes. She fits in frightful well. Not for the first time, you wonder at the fall of the cards—what it might have been like to roll under one flag. You could have been great.

Fuck that. You’re great now.

She inspects the cannons, opting to climb over the side of the _Grigori'_ s hull to examine the mouth of each weapon. She lives up to her name, does she, skittering with ease along the wood and metal. You wouldn’t be surprised if she joined you in wriggler daymares.

You’ve cleared the last of the Ribs, the hulking masses of greenish ice spreading further and further apart. The sun will not rise for another fifteen hours. You down the hooch one of Mindfang’s crew brings you and take the helm: the waters here are calmer, the current smoothing out for an unhurried royal breath before it connects to its warmer counterpart. You’ll leave your offer to their respective sea-saints, when you care to remember their names.

The Marquise joins you, leaning on the bronze railing. You are struck, again, by the ease with which she folds against it. “Done your grand tour, are you?” you ask.

“She’s respectable enough. Way out of your league.” She raises her gaze skyward. Somewhere past the murmuring sheets of winterlight among the stars, a fleet of a different nature is on the perpetual warpath. Down here, the command falls to the likes of you.

You rest your elbows between the spokes. For a while, the pair of you say nothing. Your professions are a far cry from quiet; the sea competes for order and obedience; come day, your voices are rough with sex and rust and raucous laughter. When Spin tosses her head back to sing, and the torches and oil lamps aboard flicker just so, you think maybe you can hear gods.

You need another drink.

“I don’t know this course,” she confesses, after she’s familiarized herself with the dips of the constellations.

“No one does.” You drum your fingers on the polished wood: the _Grigori’_ s fitted for a battery, down in the hull, but you ain’t one to presume a fuse box can work the currents better than the deeps can guide your sails. Call you old-fashioned that way. “It’s a fool’s charting, from here back to the Cape. We’re at the ocean’s mercy.”

Spin looks at you, and you know how she thinks, you’re no telepath and she can’t tangle her webs in you but you’re the same in all that matters. So little matters, at sea.

Fact the first—neither of you accept, nor do you give anything like mercy. Not even in your flush forays would you dare.

Fact the second—you are both, to your briny marrow, the worst of fools.


End file.
